BEFORE hearing about Anne Muldoon by word of mouth, Kathryn Carroll had interviewed so many unsuitable candidates for the job of minding her twin babies, Allison and Tom, that she had nearly given up looking.

"You have to be happy with your childcare arrangements to go to work," she says. "We had to go through a lot of rounds to get these kids. I wanted to make sure they were going to be all right."

Kathryn soon sensed that "Anne has some special ingredient. She attracts kids to her like a magnet. My kids are mad about her and she and I have a great relationship. It's really a partnership that she and I have. It has to be a two way system, with mutual respect and flexibility."

"I enjoy being with children," says Anne Muldoon, who speaks of 19 month old "Ali" and Tom as if they were her own beloved grandchildren. "I love them. I think they're wonderful, intelligent creatures. They are amazing in the way they absorb everything.

"In the summer when they are gone, I miss them terribly and I miss the parents. And I know that when the day comes that I have to give them up, I will miss them dreadfully."

Yet while she sounds like a doting grandmother, she sees her job as a serious career. "You mustn't do it if you don't love children; they are extremely demanding = and you have to be totally tuned in to them every moment of the day," she says.

EVERY stage of "her" children's development interests her, from babyhood through primary school when they return to her after school to play hero quest games on her floor. When their parents are caught up in Dublin's chaotic traffic and are late collecting them, Anne never complains.

"Parents' jobs are pressured and you cannot expect them to turn up when they say they will. You have to be flexible and go with the flow."

Anne, who has four grown up children of her own, is a member of the Irish Childminders Association and believes that all childminders should be registered and that her career should be seen as a proper job by the tax authorities, both so that parents can get loo per cent tax deductions on their payments to her and so she herself can deduct the capital investments she makes in her home for the sake of the children.